


Stitches

by cyevi



Category: Dragon Ball, Dragonball Z
Genre: Angst, F/M, Get your daily serving here, One Shot, TPTH Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 14:05:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20816381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyevi/pseuds/cyevi
Summary: Just the two of them, on a beach, at night. Just one of them is dying.





	Stitches

**Prompt: Stitches**

She tried to focus on his face, but everything seemed so blurry. Why couldn't she open her eyes more? Why did her arms feel like lead weights? Had she just been swimming? Her side felt soaked and her jacket clung to her skin in a way that made her try to shift her body away from the moist sensation. She felt his gloved hand clench her jaw and saw his mouth moving. In the background, she heard someone yelling but it seemed so far away.

–

Vegeta screamed at her, desperate to keep her conscious. The blast had ripped a ghastly tear through her side and if he couldn't keep her with him while he completed the stitches, from too much experience, he knew he would lose her.

**Prompt: Easel**

His grip on her cheeks tightened and she felt his face move closer to hers. She blinked in slow motion and tried again to focus on him, but only saw his dark eyes looking back at her. Wider than she could remember. And something else. Glossy? As she let her eyelids finally drift close, she passed out wondering if she had ever seen him with wet eyes before.

–

Muttering obscenities in his dead language, Vegeta released Bulma's jaw, letting her head slump to the side. He grabbed a large rock, ripping it from the ground with one hand. With a careful shove, he propped it under her shoulder and positioned her body like a canvas on an easel. Yanking at the seams of her destroyed jacket, he set to work.

**Prompt: Pins and Needles**

The contents of her medical capsule lay scattered next to Bulma's hip, the edge of the retention film coated in a slick river of warm blood. Vegeta violently scrubbed his dirt and blood covered glove against his thighs, then realized what he was about to do.

He brought both hands up to his mouth, bit the fingertips and ripped the dirty gloves off, spitting them to the side. With mostly clean hands now, he rummaged quickly through the surgical pins and suturing needles to find one thick enough to pierce through her oblique muscles. Finding one that looked like a ski with a slightly curved point, he grabbed the triclosan-coated wire and knotted the end. He glanced at her chest. Still breathing, but shallow.

**Prompt: Stuck Like Glue**

Vegeta leaned close to her bloodied side and bit the wire a few inches away from the knot sticking out of her newly closed flesh. He ignored the taste of her blood on the wire and set the tools down, finally.

Not his cleanest work, but humans were so damn fragile; he had needed to work so fast. The erratic stitches extended across her side in a chaotic, overlapping zig zag glued tightly to her skin. Ugly and would leave a hell of a scar, but … scars meant life went on.

Vegeta removed the rock from under her shoulder and lay Bulma flat on the grass. A thin mist was drifting in from the sea behind them as evening settled in. He turned his gaze to hers. Gods be damned.

She was so pale.

**Prompt: Palette**

A flickering orange began to creep into the eigengrau nothingness of Bulma's exhaustion. She felt her head tilt toward the warmth, but her eyes refused to open. With a drowsiness she couldn't completely process, she floated through a palette of pain, velutinous consciousness, and an uneven blend of heat and chills. With a sliver of awareness, she tried to take in a deep breath, but her body turned against her, rewarding her with a spasm that tasted purple.

–

The groan Bulma let out as she slept on the grass ripped through Vegeta's stomach. He watched her, silently, crouched by the makeshift campfire and ignored his own hunger. Her brow was dappled with sweat as a fever began to fight its way through her system.

**Prompt: Unravel**

Vegeta tore his gaze away from her. Tendrils of mist slipped around them, warded off by the warmth of the fire. Across the sea, thin reflections from the last night of a waning moon scattered across the low tides. He tried not to think about how many times he had seen this exact injury on others, how many times he had been the one to cause it, how many times his enemies had fallen because of it.

A breeze drifted across his blood encrusted fingers just as a wave stumbled into a nearby outcropping of rocks. He watched the waves. He tried to make his breath to match their rhythm but felt his fingers clench into a fist as his vision became liquid. The fact that it was his shot unraveled his last fragment of control.

**Prompt: Thimble**

Throughout his relatively short, violent life, Vegeta had never run from a fight. The consequences of battle were, to him, like lessons a child receives. Necessary, difficult, often unpleasant. But one should not, could not run from these. Even the concept of lowering himself to cowardice was a sensation he couldn't really recognize. For a moment, a thimbleful of doubt raced through his gut, wondering if he was craving such a retreat now.

Vegeta closed his eyes and listened to her stuttering breaths. There was nothing else he could do at this point but wait until morning. It wouldn't matter to her if he stayed or left.

**Prompt: Button Up**

He stood and buttoned up what was left of her coat. He walked to the edge of the sea, kneeled into the surf and dropped his hands into the water. Particles of gray and pearl sand swept across his blood stained flesh as the waves began to chip away at his mistake. Cold water soaked up through the fabric of his boots and pants. With a tremble, he let his hands collapse into the sand, his shoulders folding in on themselves. Before his body revisited anger upon itself, he roared out to the empty sea, throwing his hands through the water with a massive blast of searingly bright energy.

The sea parted, shooting up into two columns as the blast thundered past the horizon. As the water collapsed in on itself again, the sky darkened again and Vegeta dropped his head into his soaking hands.

**Prompt: Paper Thin**

Between the present and his future, Vegeta always knew there existed a thread, paper thin, that held him to this life. The harder his present situation was, the closer that thread felt to tearing. As he finally worked toward his ascension on Earth, he realized that thread had begun to thicken. For years, he had known that the more power he had gained, the stronger his future. Having lived a life with a tattered, shredded thread for so long, he had worked with a single-minded fervor to attach himself to this life.

But it hadn't been reaching legendary powers, fighting every opponent he could, or even bringing himself to the edge of death that had truly changed the thread of his fate for the better. It had been her.

And he would not run.

Not from her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the TPTH September 2019 Drabble Night "Arts and Crafts". It was an amazing event with tons of participants and I highly suggest you check out the other stories and BianWW's super cute art. BianWW also illustrated an amazing banner for the evening with loads of detail, but given the tone of this story, I've opted to leave it off. Thank you to the ever amazing rockykelboa for hosting! 
> 
> Astute readers may notice that I've left off one prompt. For personal reasons, I chose not to participate in the "Dream Weaver" prompt. Dream catchers are a cultural item of the Ojibwe people and it didn't feel right for me to play with an idea that has a specific spiritual meaning for the sake of a fanfic or to incorporate its ideas under the night's theme.
> 
> I tried something different with this specific story, very purposely focusing only on a specific event and its fallout. I know, I know, there are so many unanswered questions. And still, I make no promises that this story will continue. If inspiration hits, we'll get those answers. If not, we'll all suffer with Vegeta. Final note, it's a good day when I get to use "eigengrau" in a story. If you're unfamiliar with the word, it's the specific gray we all see behind our closed eyelids. And I just think that's spiffy. Thanks for reading!


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